$5.1 Million Pledge Made to Western University of Health Sciences

POMONA, CA--(Marketwire - February 05, 2009) - Western University of Health Sciences has received a $5.1 million commitment for three of the University’s colleges, creation of an endowed lectureship honoring the University’s founding president, and naming rights to a floor of the school’s new Health Education Center.

The gift from Drs. Daljit and Elaine Sarkaria of Orange, one of the largest donor commitments made to WesternU in its 31-year history, comes in the midst of a $100 million expansion of the University.

The Sarkarias’ $5.1 million gift has three parts:

 -- $3 million to provide $1 million apiece to the College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific, the College of Veterinary Medicine and the College of Dental Medicine. a. $2 million to secure the naming rights for the Research Center to be located on the fourth floor of the new Health Education Center. b. $100,000 to create the Dr. Philip Pumerantz Distinguished Lectureship in Inter-professional Education. Dr. Pumerantz is founder and president of Western University of Health Sciences. 

“This impressive commitment to WesternU by Drs. Sarkaria reaffirms their belief that education is the key to improving the human condition, and that the work being done at WesternU -- training tomorrow’s health care professionals -- is powerful and meaningful,” said Dr. Philip Pumerantz, president of WesternU. “When I think of all that will be made possible by such a commitment, I am excited and pleased for our students and staff, and for the public that will be served by our graduates.”

“When WesternU embarked on its journey to become a comprehensive graduate academic health science center with the simultaneous addition of three new colleges in dentistry, optometry and podiatry, our campus community knew that it would be an ambitious, yet unique and pioneering venture,” said Benjamin Cohen, DO, Provost and Chief Operating Officer of WesternU.

“The support of visionary philanthropists like the Sarkarias will breathe life into WesternU’s new dental college, it will propel our osteopathic medicine and veterinary medicine colleges into new heights of academic excellence, it will provide much needed support for enhancement of WesternU’s research endeavors, and finally, it will create a lectureship series that will balance WesternU’s founding principles of humanism, caring, and compassion with modern innovations in graduate health science instruction,” Dr. Cohen said. “The Sarkarias’ gift is truly an investment in the University’s exciting future.”

In keeping with their deeply held tenets of bettering human life through education, the Sarkarias, longtime acquaintances of WesternU board member Dr. Ethan Allen, wish to encourage and foster exemplary medical research, education and high-quality patient care through the endowed fund within WesternU for the annual lectureship. The goal is to bring a speaker of national prominence to WesternU to promote advances in scientific knowledge and understanding, and to honor Dr. Pumerantz, who has dedicated his professional life to the education of health care professionals in a compassionate, caring and interdisciplinary environment.

The Dr. Philip Pumerantz Distinguished Lectureship will start in 2009, with the invitation to a renowned person for a keynote address. This individual will provide a vital motivational lecture.

The Sarkarias previously gave $1.2 million to WesternU for an endowed research position in the College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific to study the molecular mechanisms of Parkinson’s disease. They also have funded research on Alzheimer’s disease at WesternU.